Dawson in prison greens appears as a shell of himself

At 11.01am Christopher Michael Dawson, 74, was brought into the dock of District Court LG1 at Sydney’s Downing Centre court complex to the tinkling of heavy, grey handcuffs being removed from his wrists by a correctional officer.

Christopher Dawson attending an earlier court hearing, in May 2022. He is now charged with unlawful sex with a schoolgirl, and is facing a fresh trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

His arrival was heralded with a small snatch of music of which, by now, he would be extremely familiar.

At 11.01am yesterday, Christopher Michael Dawson, 74, was brought into the dock of District Court LG1 at Sydney’s Downing Centre court complex to the tinkling of heavy, grey handcuffs being removed from his wrists by a correctional officer.

Dawson wore the ubiquitous pea-green prison tracksuit – the pants curiously more faded than the top – and took his seat alone at the commencement of his carnal knowledge trial.

Almost a year to the day he went on trial for the murder of his wife Lyn in the NSW Supreme Court, at the northern tip of Sydney’s Hyde Park, this time around he entered the comparatively frenetic machine of the District Court housed in the former Mark Foy’s “piazza” department store at the park’s southwestern flank on the corner of Elizabeth and Liverpool Streets.

There were echoes to the murder trial which ended in his conviction last year.

His brother Peter, a lanky, head-shaved lawyer who punctuated the murder trial daily with his consistent, hacking cough, was back for the carnal knowledge case. The cough remained.

There were, too, some familiar faces in the public gallery, the stalwarts who had endured the epic 10-week murder trial, their thirst for Dawson drama perhaps not slaked.

The Crown Prosecutor was Emma Blizard, who assisted now District Court judge Craig Everson in the murder trial prosecution.

Winter was close, like last year.

Some in the Sydney CBD had donned sky blue NSW rugby league apparel in the lead up to Game 1 of State of Origin.

And carried through unchanged to the Downing Centre trial was Dawson’s stony countenance. If anything, his visage, perhaps understandably, had hardened since Justice Ian Harrison sentenced him to 24 years in prison late last year.

Dawson stared downwards for most of the proceedings, largely taken up yesterday with legal argument before Justice Sarah Huggett.

The accused was, in fact, the antithesis of Justice Huggett. Where she was permanently talking with her hands, nudging her head forward slightly to make a point, shifting incrementally but ceaselessly at the judge’s table, jotting notes with an ear cocked to the bar table, Dawson drifted regularly into daydream, his eyes narrowed and glazed, only shifting slightly at some nondescript movement in the court, before returning to his indifferent repose.

At trial last year until the verdict, Dawson came and went to the Supreme Court with his defence team and brother Peter in tow, taking lunch daily in an anteroom outside the courtroom, habitually drinking a can of Coke, attired in what seemed a rotating wardrobe of three suits.

But yesterday, he came into court from his new home at Sydney’s notorious Long Bay prison, and though wordless and largely expressionless, his granite face, if you looked at it long enough, did reveal one thing that reflected his present position.

That face permanently carried a wafer-thin sheen of bitterness.

As the court proceedings stopped and started throughout the day, courtesy of modified arrangements made to accommodate Dawson’s present health concerns – he needed a break from sitting every hour – the handcuffs tinkled and jingled, on and off, off and on.

At one point one of his prison officers suggested to Dawson’s defence counsel, Claire Wasley, public defender, that it might be expedient, given the stop-start nature of proceedings, that they might keep the accused in a space near the door to the dock rather than regularly hauling him up and down from the cells.

Outside, as always, the life of a great city carried on. A shirtless man in a military cap argued cheerfully with a friend about celebrity chefs. Workers lunched, their office ID cards clipped to their belts. Lovers embraced on the grass of Hyde Park and took in the sun. A woman weeping on a park bench was comforted by a companion.

And at a cafe close to the courts a table of young women debated over coffee.

“Chris Dawson’s trial starts today.”

“Ohh, yeah?”

“The Teacher’s Pet guy.”

“Ohh, yeah.”

Proof once more that in a city that makes no secret of its obsession with ephemera, the Dawson drama had entered the Sydney landscape and retained its seemingly depthless fascination.

At 2pm, after lunch, Justice Huggett acquitted work on another trial before the Dawson matter proceeded.

Huggett, born in Moree, in far northern NSW, to a large family (her father was a police officer) was convivial but no-nonsense, and there was a hint, deeply ingrained, in her attitude and mannerisms and even tone of voice that suggested a country town practicality. She responded to requests and queries with a short, sharp “good”, or “thanks”, and rolled forward, as effervescent and snappy and all-seeing as a butcherbird.

As for Dawson, you could barely detect him breathing in the dock and, for all intents and purposes, he may have been physically present to the naked eye, but during yesterday’s hearing he simply wasn’t there.

Until the music of the cuffs sounded one last time, and the shell of him was gone for the day.

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